24 November 2015 StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

BAJOThanks Goose! The third and final chapter of the StarCraft II trilogy is upon us, and Hex, we're both fans of the series and partial to a bit of RTS. But we do happen to have a StarCraft expert in house, so it would be crazy of us not to ask him to review it.

HEXYes, our very own host of Good Game: Well Played - Hingers. And Bajo, I think he's a little bit excited.

HINGERSStarcraft! Starcraft! Starcraft! Starcraft! Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void is the latest edition to the popular space opera franchise which started way, way back in 1998. Over the past 17 years, a lot has changed around the edges of the game, but the fundamental RTS mechanics that define the series remain in place.

The single player campaign wraps up the story of Terran rebel turned commander Jim Raynor, and Kerrigan - the Queen of Blades. Although this campaign transcends the classic war against the Zerg as an ancient galactic evil is awoken, and the stakes are risen higher than ever before. For the bulk of the main campaign, you play as Artanis, the leader of the Protoss. The galaxy has come under existential threat from Amon, the fallen one and your job is to gather the few uncorrupted forces scattered throughout space to take on and defeat Amon's legion.

While commanding Artanis' groundforces through missions, you meet and occasionally get to control powerful heroes, who're often old favourites from previous games - but unlike the last expansion, hero units now take a back seat. Instead the main mechanic this time around is the Spear of Adun, an arkship, constantly hovering above the battlefield with an array of powerful abilities at your disposal. It allows you to call down reinforcements, give your units temporary combat buffs, or just pulverise an enemy base. The Spear of Adun's abilities feel great to use and really incentivized me to play through the bonus objectives so I could unlock more ways of spectacular ways of killing space monsters.

Similarly, each new level of the campaign unlocks new units from your war council. So, if you find yourself stuck on a mission, there is a lot of fun in experimenting with the different units and abilities at your disposal until you finally unlock the correct combination the mission is calling for. I did find some of the missions at the start of the campaign a bit samey - you build a base, you build some guys, you go crush your opponent with overwhelming force, but the second half of the campaign gets a lot more interesting with a much better array of mission types. Where the single player missions really shine though, is in the epilogue after the main campaign.

The writers have gone all out in the ending of this terrifying saga, which begins to questions some fundamental assumptions about the reality of the StarCraft universe and is a fitting, if not philosophically confusing, end to the journey we've been following for so many years. And the whole thing is held together with Blizzard's trademark cutscenes. Once you're done with the campaign, you'll also want to try your hand at multiplayer, which for me has always been the best thing about the StarCraft series.

Starcraft is a game that is almost entirely about good decision making. There are so few random elements of luck or chance to the game that you leave each ladder match feeling 100% crushed or elated and this is what makes it such a compelling multiplayer experience. Starcraft teaches you PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Having said that, one of the big draw backs has been in the past, how un-fun it could be to play with your friends. Experienced players didn't necessarily know people at their level, so to prevent pointless noob stomping you had to get pretty creative with your game setups.

But now, Blizzard has released a slew of new modes to make casual multiplayer play a little bit more fun. The first of these is Archon mode, which allows two players to control the same set of units. Bajo and I tried this out over the weekend and it was a lot of fun. I'm obviously the best at Starcraft and Bajo is an unforgiveable scrub, but for once it didn't matter. I was in charge of managing our economy, and our bases, and spent the whole game just pumping out units for Bajo to send to mercilessly slaughter our foes.

I think this'll be a great way for friends to learn and teach the finer points of multiplayer, without having to tediously explain things via in-game chat, while you're trying to four-gate your newbie friend and they're just like cursing you out for being Protoss scum.

The other new type of multiplayer, is the co-op missions. From what I've seen, the missions themselves are kinda similar to the ones you play through in the single player mode, but at the end of each mission your character gets experience which unlocks some previously unseen abilities. These new modes are an exciting new addition for the casual player, but the core of multiplayer will always be the classic 1v1 matchups, and thankfully they are more complex than ever. The big changes are all the new units. There are balances and tweaks to the existing units and gameplay, but each race is also getting two additional units, including the return of the classic Zerg Lurker, which we haven't seen since Brood War.

The new units are an attempt by the devs to fill holes in particular in-game compositions, so rather than just adding straight up ranged or melee units, the new units have very specific and complex roles that require dedicated strategies. Gone are the days of just building more stuff than your opponent and moving across the map. Now, more than ever, you've got to be on the look out for powerful unit counters, harassment and just straight up sneak attacks that if go unnoticed, will lose you the game. Also, on a personal note, Carriers have a received a buff, which makes them more viable than ever! Entaro Adun, MR CARRIER.

Anyway, all this means classic multiplayer is a bigger mind game than ever, and I love it. That's not to say I love all of these new changes, I mean I will never, ever, ever, accept that siege tanks should be able to be dropped in siege mode, it's ridiculous. As if Terran wasn't easy mode before, now it's a ****ing joke!

And for Australian players, Blizzard has finally brought local servers online, which means more high level competitive play for local talent. My sick APMs are finally lagless! But, we should say that Blizzard do tend to make a real point of developing and balancing the game over time in response to match data. This means the game we're playing at release could be very different to the game we're playing in 12 or 24 months, which is super exciting if you're a fan of the franchise.

Fundamentally, the game is building on the close-to-perfect RTS formula we saw in the original title, and by adding complexity in both single and multiplayer modes there's just so much stuff to get through, which makes this an absolute joy to sink your teeth - or psy-blades - into.

HEXSo, Hingers, what's your verdict?

HINGERSWell, I've always been a huge fan of the franchise, and I feel like I've always been a fanatic of the StarCraft universe, and the StarCraft gameplay and the StarCraft community. You know, Legacy of the Void just exceeded all my expectations! And I'm going to give it 5 out of 5 StarCrafts.